


Start Believing

by TooSel



Category: Suits (US TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, Fix-It, Introspection, M/M, Wedding Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-13
Updated: 2020-03-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:28:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23031709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TooSel/pseuds/TooSel
Summary: It’s strange. It’s almost like he’s nervous.Harvey doesn’t get nervous.Harvey doesn’t get married either, though.(On the day of his wedding, Harvey reflects on the unlikeliness of the events that brought him here. Life is funny like that sometimes.)
Relationships: Mike Ross/Harvey Specter
Comments: 20
Kudos: 143





	Start Believing

**Author's Note:**

> Hello folks! I wrote this long before that awful finale where (spoilers?) Harvey actually does get married... but seeing as it's not to Mike, I'm choosing to ignore that. Yay for canon divergence!

Harvey wipes his hands on his pants for the third time in as many minutes, still not managing to get rid of the stickiness. His palms keep sweating no matter what he does. He knows it doesn’t matter, not really. That in just a few minutes he couldn’t care less about the state of his hands or the fluttering in his stomach, and yet he can’t stop fixating on either of it now, his mind so stuck on these minor details that it’s impossible to think about anything else.

It’s strange. It’s almost like he’s nervous.

Harvey doesn’t get nervous.

Harvey doesn’t get married either, though.

Jesus. He’s getting married today. He’s actually getting married. To the love of his goddamn life.

How the hell did that happen?

Harvey clenches his hands in an attempt to keep them steady, sucking a deep breath into his lungs.

He was never one to dream about getting married. Never really expected himself to. He had these images in his head when he was a kid, of course, the future everyone thought he was going to have, a wife and two kids and a house, all that. As he got older, Harvey started caring less about going down that path, the image blurring more and more as other things came into focus. Law school, his career, all the trouble with the family he already had.

There was also the issue of whether he’d even want to have a wife, or if he’d rather have a husband instead – if he _could_ have one being another question altogether.

But those were things he couldn’t control, had no influence on, and so he didn’t bother concerning himself with them. If it was going to happen, then it would. If not, no harm done. It wasn’t like he _needed_ anyone to complete him or any of that drivel people always talked. If anything, he’d need someone to challenge him. Someone who could keep up and demanded the same in return. He didn’t know anyone like that anyway, so it was a moot point.

All those lazy musings evaporated when Mike crashed into his life and Harvey quickly realized just how fast and how hard he could fall. He’d never really bought into the concept of The One when talking about a significant other, but looking at Mike, he just knew that it was going to be him or no one at all. Because he’d never felt for another person what Mike brought out in him, not in that capacity, and he was fairly certain that he never would again. Mike, who kept him on his toes like no one else, who made him want to do better and be better and become more than he already was, just had to be a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence.

He’d never seen him coming, but there he was, a blessing and a curse and more than Harvey had ever dared to hope for at once.

The only problem was that Mike never showed the slightest interest in him. Harvey suspected he was straight, and it didn’t matter anyway, since he quickly got so tied up with Rachel that making any kind of move was simply out of the question. Harvey wasn’t that kind of guy, he’d made that promise to himself long ago.

And so he stood by and said nothing, watching Mike dance around Rachel, watching the stakes grow higher, watching people who tried to hurt them circling them like sharks.

Watching them hurt each other, too. They tore each other apart sometimes, trying to prove something to god knows who, to protect each other from outside threats, to do everything in their power to keep the other safe.

And Mike hurt him. Never intentionally, never in a way that Harvey really held against him. He just did what he had to do, what he thought was right, without sparing a thought for him. And why should he? Harvey never told him how he felt. He’d shown him, a hundred times over, but that wasn’t a language he expected Mike to understand or pay attention to, not when he was so busy with the relationship he already had.

Eventually Mike got married, and he took off to start over, and Harvey was left behind in the same old life with one massive gaping hole, thinking, this is what it’s going to be like from now on. This is how it was always going to be.

And then Mike came back.

And then he turned his life upside down yet again.

And now here he is, not exactly as young as he thought he would be when he imagined this day as a kid, but here all the same. And today he is getting married to the man he has loved for over a decade, with more gray streaks in his hair than he cares to admit and a lot more obstacles behind them than he ever wanted, but they are here, and that-

That in itself is a goddamn miracle.

Harvey takes a deep breath, a sense of tranquility washing through him at the thought.

There was a time when this wasn’t even a possibility. When he never would have believed that Mike could want him this way, could want to be with him. That he would, one day. He spent years watching him fight for someone else, believing that even if it wasn’t for her, there was no way he could ever feel that way about him instead.

Even after Mike returned from Seattle without Rachel.

He was different when he came back. Different from the last time he saw him during that horrible case with the horrible fight, but different from the Mike who left in the first place too.

Seattle hadn’t worked out the way he wanted it to, the way he’d hoped, and neither had his marriage, and this time the setback didn’t feed his anger like it used to before. This time it humbled him.

He asked for Harvey’s forgiveness. Harvey told him that he didn’t have to, but he did anyway, and so he gave it without a moment of hesitation.

And still he didn’t believe it. Mike clearly valued their friendship, the company he gladly provided during his now quiet nights at home, but he still didn’t believe that he could want him like _that_.

Even when his relationship with Donna was on the verge of collapse, to the point where it was clear that it couldn’t last, but he couldn’t take that final step and let her go – much for the same reason he’d held on to her in the first place – and Mike was the catalyst that made it break apart for good, finally getting Harvey to admit that he wanted something else entirely.

He never meant to use Donna as a coping mechanism. He never meant to hurt her. He failed on both accounts.

All of them did, though. They all failed. They all hurt each other. Their stories were never without sin, but always ones of forgiveness.

He forgave himself for Mike ending up in Danbury. He forgave Mike for leaving. Donna forgave him, eventually. And he thought that he could live like that, with them by his side as his friends, neither one anything more, but still there, always.

Until Mike kissed him.

“I want to see something,” he said right before he did it, his voice a little breathless, and Harvey honestly didn’t realize what he was about to do until their lips touched.

He reciprocated more on instinct than anything else, too stunned to process those new developments, but it was enough for Mike to pull back and smile, declaring, “I _knew_ you wanted this too.”

What a peculiar thing to say after a long, long decade.

“You didn’t know,” Harvey scoffed when he found his voice again. His lips still tingled where Mike had touched them.

“I didn’t,” Mike agrees. “Not until recently. But now I do.”

How unlikely, that he’d had that realization after years, that he wanted the same thing Harvey did, that it was not too late for them to have a chance at happiness with each other after all.

Unlikely, but clearly not impossible.

Life is funny like that sometimes.

Mike tried. He tried to make up for the time lost. Tried to be better for him. Tried to show him that he wanted this, how _much_ he wanted it. Harvey saw it every day, and he worked for it too, but it was really all of Mike’s efforts to show him that he’d grown, that he knew what they had and appreciated it, that really made him believe this could actually last.

Carefully, Harvey allowed himself to not just be happy, but confident that this time, no one was coming to take it away from him. It took him years, but he got there, and he thought that was it, that was the happiest he would ever be, and it was already so much more than he’d ever expected to have.

And then Mike had asked him to marry him.

“Why do you look so surprised?” he enquired when Harvey failed to find his voice, his smile soft and just a tad sad underneath. “Have I not told you enough how much I love you?”

He had.

He’d told him over and over, in the mornings and before they went to bed, between the sheets, before he left for work, when they had sex – especially then – and over breakfast on lazy Sunday mornings. And Harvey adored hearing it, couldn’t get enough of it, trying to absorb the words every time he said them.

But apparently he still hadn’t quite believed them.

He’d thought about marrying Mike, of course. About proposing. But he’d never actually considered it. Never considered the possibility of Mike wanting to do this again, with _him_.

He still can’t believe it now, that this is the turn his life is taking, but the sweaty palms and the brand-new tux Rene tailored him and the muted chatter of their guests waiting outside make it undeniable that this is real.

Harvey is going to marry Mike. And it’s about time he started believing.

**Author's Note:**

> So the reason I'm posting this now after months of forgetting about it is mostly just to get it out and give you an update re: new fics!
> 
> There's another (longer) one shot after this one that should be ready by the end of March. I'm also knees deep in the next multi-chaptered AU (65k and counting!) and I'm hoping to start posting that soon as well :)
> 
> As always, I'm not a native speaker and I value any and all concrit you may have. Also, comments expand my life by a month each, so, you know. ;)


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